We All Fall Down
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: It's all a terribly relevant metaphor.


**A/N Computer sent into The Shop, came back with all documents and files erased. Anyone looking for an update to any previous chapter stories I have posted will be sorely disappointed.**

_Summary: It's all a terribly relevant metaphor._

--we all fall down--

by: itstimetodance

He never meant to turn him into _this._

Cold eyes, blank eyes, flat empty _dead _eyes. Staring so intensely, but with an underlying boredom, at anything calling for his attention. Like he knew he should care, but he really didn't. Like he was afraid what everything would do to him, that they would hurt him further then then they had already.

He didn't mean for this to happen.

"Alan?" Nick asked, very, very quietly. His pencil poised over a blank, almost yellowed piece of paper, he seemed as innocent has he could be. His eyes were downcast, the blackness of his irises lost to Alan. For only a moment.

He was slightly glad for this, and slightly ashamed.

"Yeah?" Alan asked, sliding the skillet back and forth over the hot blue flame of the stove; bacon sizzled, grease popped like bad foreground music in a film. Alan imagined that, if he were to listen closely, the sounds of Mum's violent shrieks and Dad's gentle coaxing would wane out.

"You know that old rhyme? _Ashes, ashes, we all fall down--_that one?" The curiosity in his voice was staged, so much so that a foreboding chill ran up Alan's spine.

He took a fork and plucked the shriveled bacon from the pan, dropping it on a paper plate and dropping it in front of Nick without looking at him. "Yeah."

"Did you know," he said, "that it was made up 'cause of the Plague. Like, people were dying and some kids made it up--they would burn the bodies and it would smell so bad they'd take roses--like rosies..."

Alan did know this.

The sound of the chair creaking as Nick leaned back against it added to the quiet soundtrack of the apartment.

"Really?" Alan said, more then aware at how ironic it was that his own interest came across just as plastic to his own ears as Nicks voice had been. "That's cool. Did you learn that it school?"

Nick shook his head, chewing idly on the bacon. "Kevin Neil told me."

Alan didn't like Kevin Neil. He killed small animals in his backyard.

"And," Nick continued, "kids still sing it, and they don't got a clue why it is."

It seemed like a fairly good metaphor, if Alan's ever seen one. The song, that is.

Something that parents let their kids chime and skip rope to, something that's uniform to happy nieghborhoods, but really means nothing but horrible horrible things. Deadly innocence, said Alan's inner poet.

Nick's cold black eyes and impassive expression flickered through Alan's mine once more. The body of a kid, the face of a kid. When his eyes were closed, when he didn't look at you, you could almost pretend the bloodthirsty monster wasn't there. That this was a normal little kid with dark hair and big hands that Alan had to insist was his brother to old ladies who couldn't see well. Pretend, and nothing more. Because these kind of things always want to be known.

Alan looked at the clock. "You have school. Do you want me to walk you over?" They lived several blocks from the local primary, after all.

He could almsot feel Nick's scowl before he looked at him, "Do I have to go?"

Alan dumped the pan unceremoniously into the sink and turned on the water. "Every day, buddy."

"Mrs. Sheppard is making me read," he said, though his flat, even tone already implied he'd already forgotten the argument.

Alan was reminded of Nick's clipped, broken speech, like English was a second language.

His eyes were a mask as he shoved his loose papers into his backpack, wincing as another climax of shrieks from behind the wall echoed through the small flat. I shoved him gently towards the door (we were first floor) and we started down the street.

Yes, it's a perfect metaphor. A horribly relevant metaphor. Darkness, pure evil trapped in innocence, holding my hand and wearing Flash sneakers.

Goddamnit, I _hate _metaphors.


End file.
